How much of your life is online?
April 20, 2009 //
After seeing the love heart in my steam on Facebook last night, I tweeted that I’d never include my relationship status on Facebook because my life, believe it or not, is actually very private. A few people asked me for clarification so I decided to write a post to explain in more detail and to solicit your contribution to the conversation. 140 characters just isn’t enough right now.
You might think I put everything online, but I’m sure you’ll now realise that I never tweet, blog or facebook anything that’s private such a family matters - with the exception of one of my sisters, Deirdra, as I want to help promote her fantastic artwork.
Someone DM’d me to say that I was right because Facebook is so open. Facebook isn’t open, it’s a platform that allows you to put everything out in the open. It’s how you use it that matters. If you don’t want people to see pictures of your kids, don’t upload them. If you don’t want people to see you drunk at a party, don’t get drunk or don’t allow people to view pictures of you online by using your privacy settings - this one is particularly easy.
So, how much do you put online? What do you exclude if anything?
Gerald Wiggins says 
marco goldschmied says 
Sharon Crossley says 
What’s it to you, stop invading my privacy!
April 20th, 2009
75% of my business.
50% of my social life
25% of my family life
5% of my relationship
On Facebook I just state I’m “in a relationship” Mainly to cut down on targeted ads for finding dates or extending/expanding parts of my body.
I use privacy settings ALL the time. That way I have granular control of how I come across to people online.
April 20th, 2009
Anything I am involved in for work or work related activities is out there (helps as doing more and more events, consulting etc so is good for networking).
When Facebook first came out I used to put down more personal things but learned quickly that it can be a very bad idea (especially if clients connect to you on some of the social networks out there, which inevitably they do).
Think it depends what you are online for I guess. If I was looking for a date am sure personal details would be essential (made up or not), if you are an average 9-5 working for the man chap, you just have to be sensible (i.e don’t slag off work, colleagues, bosses, or put up pics of you horridly drunk).
Hope all is well dear chap and chat soon.
Chris
April 20th, 2009
You raise an interesting and important matter and of course point to the much contested, long considered notion of selfhood. Even if we are careful about what we chose to put on-line we are saying something and portraying our selves simply by being in that space. In fact, I think what we don’t reveal or say can be as powerful in helping shape the way others perceive us.
I often wonder what the Modernists would think of this era of social networking and our rapid uptake of new technologies which implore us to share, share and share some more. Perhaps they would argue that what ever we put out there on these social sites and in our blogs is all fictional. They’d probably allude to our big, competitive, insecure egos.
I for one have put lot out there about my ’self’ (mainly in my travel blog) and I refer to my self a lot in facebook/twitter updates as is the nature of such postings but I rarely mention feelings, I don’t use names, I make sure only ‘friends’ can see my photos, numbers etc.
In short, I say a lot but don’t say a lot more. Others, I notice are far less discrete and I suppose far more trusting - every day I cringe at some deeply personal comment and worry about why the person really feels the need to share such gritty details with the world.
Sorry for the waffle!
April 20th, 2009
Personally I would say that I post/write/tweet/blog/comment about everything to do with my life, so long as it’s my life. By that I mean that I won’t do any of the above about information “belonging” to someone else. The way I see it, if someone really wants to know something about me (that I don’t want them to know) then they’ll probably find a way of finding out.
April 20th, 2009